How magazines can organize a social media team

Hugh Byrne's Blog

How to organize a social media team

“I hate Twitter. “ These words, uttered by one of our editors, echo from a conversation in which a coworker suggested he tweet his latest article. And those weren’t just HIS feelings towardsTwitter, but Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, and more -- all of which are important platforms for generating brand awareness, sales leads, and increasing website traffic. This opinion was echoed by many in our organization, GreenBiz Group, who were enthusiastic about wanting to help our growing media and information company, but less so about being burdened with yet another task.

Who can blame them? Social media can’t be automated. Social media demands your free time, and some sites are a waste of time. It’s particularly hard to keep up with fast-changing platforms.

But doing it right will increase your site traffic, connect with your audience, and build your brand. At GreenBiz, we’ve used social media to raise our site traffic by double digits, engage readers in conversation on timely and relevant topics, and extended the reach for our internal and partner promotions efforts beyond traditional email and space advertising campaigns.

Social media is not solo media

Who typically handles social media strategy? Usually the marketing or audience development group. But social media should involve anyone who participates in social media on their own time -- which these days is just about everyone. Editors, sales staff, managers, and contributors all have their own networks of readers, story sources, and customers, and they can be valuable resources without requiring them to bear the burden of becoming social media mavens in their own right.

A GreenBiz b2b story on Starbucks’ efforts to recycle coffee cups generated moderate interest from our audience in the first few hours following publication. But once our editors and bloggers joined in to help increase exposure for the story on Twitter, a Starbucks social media team member took notice, and published it on the company’s Facebook page. Result: Within two days a story that would normally generate 1,000 pageviews drew well over 20,000.

Some publications limit their social media presence to anonymous, rss-fed Twitter streams or Facebook fan pages. That’s a mistake because they miss out on an opportunity to connect with their audience on the social platforms where professionals increasingly are sharing news and information amongst themselves. And with social media being a two-way street, it’s an important source of feedback for publications to learn where their content resonates, and to gather new ideas for further coverage.

Your entire organization can and should be active participants in social media efforts. But it’s important to use their time appropriately, focusing on complementary rather than duplicative activity.

The best (and sometimes most difficult) folks to help in these efforts are editors and contributors. Readers and sources often have preferred editors or contributors they follow independently. For that reason, it’s important to actively encourage editors and contributors to not only promote their own stories, but promote other items that are potentially of interest to their followers, including items relevant to their beat, or those with potential for broader audience interest (engagement tool PostRank can be helpful in selecting which items to promote).

Also, don’t ignore the potential for sales and senior management to help leverage social media for your benefit. Sales and senior management have professional connections with partners and sponsors on LinkedIn, and status updates there can be a great tool for building awareness and interest in events, conferences, and other marketing campaigns. Incorporating them in your campaign is a great way to reach prospects and differentiate from the high level of email noise.

Make it easy to participate

Undoubtedly there’s interest and support among some within your organization for using social media, and resistance from others. A good way to ensure maximum participation from others is for you to become an expert – then make ease the way for others to participate, by offering help and simple tools.

1. Create step-by-step instructions. Offer tutorial sessions, documentation, and dedicated Skype chat rooms focused on real-time social media campaigns.
2. Craft effective Tweets/ReTweets, or other cut-paste/click activities for others to use or customize at their convenience.
3. Target an appropriate LinkedIn discussion group or Facebook page, with suggestions on ways to participate, including relevant content to post, discussion threads where comments would be relevant.

Creating an easy-to-follow routine or playbook reduces the time necessary for your team members to help. It also expands the voices disseminating your message. And while scripted activity may not always be necessary or appropriate, a template for how to participate on your key platforms will ensure greater participation from your team.

Augment weak spots with expanded networks and freelancers

While you’ll want to participate in multiple social media platforms, you may be able to focus on only one or two (e.g. Twitter and LinkedIn). But rather than ignore other platforms, consider alternative ways to generate more activity without having to invest in more headcount.

At GreenBiz, we’ve incorporated a mix of extended networks and freelance talent to help expand our reach. A powerful tool has been to establish or join in informal cooperative ventures with other sites. Using instant messaging, and Skype chat rooms, we share and of cross-promote compelling items from sites and bloggers with similar audiences, but not necessarily direct competitors.

These social media “coopetition” efforts have been largely complementary to our efforts, and also help diversify the messages and content shared with our networks to the benefit of all.

The key to success in such activities is keeping expectations realistic, and ensuring your level of effort and engagement matches well with others who are also participating.

Additionally, selective use of freelancers can be a cost-effective solution for maintaining a presence on platforms that may not currently be strategic, but still provide opportunities to present your brand to a relevant audience, or drive additional traffic from non-core sources. Selecting freelancers who are active in similar areas of interest/markets as yours is key, and it’s imperative to set well-defined, measurable objectives by which their efforts and performance can be assessed (a good rule for internal efforts as well).

Your team is one of your greatest opportunities to realize the full potential social media has to offer your organization. They want to help, and making it easy for them to do so will broaden your reach, and further unlock the power of what is undoubtedly the fastest growing sector of online communication.